NEW YORK (AP) — Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, briefly showed up to the New York sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs on Friday to support the hip-hop mogul, a longtime friend. But he wasn’t allowed into the courtroom and left after briefly watching the trial on a video monitor in another room.
Ye, dressed in white, arrived at Manhattan federal court before noon while the trial was on a break and spent about 40 minutes in the building.
After emerging from an airport-style security screening, Ye was asked if he was at the courthouse to support Combs.
“Yes,” he responded with a nod. He then hustled to an elevator and did not respond when asked if he might testify on Combs’ behalf when the defense begins its presentation as early as next week.
Courthouse security did not take him to the 26th floor where the trial occurs in one of the building’s largest courtrooms. Admittance there is strictly controlled, with seats reserved for Combs’ family and legal team, the media and spectators who wait in line for hours to get a coveted seat.
The rapper was taken instead to a courtroom three floors below the trial floor. There, he briefly observed testimony on a large closed-circuit monitor in an overflow room that was one floor below the usual overflow room, which was packed with media representatives and courthouse employees who heard erroneously that he might be there.
As word of his actual location spread and spectators trickled into the room where Ye sat in the front row with Combs’ son, Christian, a bodyguard and another Combs’ supporter on a side of the room that was otherwise kept vacant by a court officer, Ye looked around the room before abruptly getting up and leaving, along with the others with him.
Ye didn’t answer further questions as he left the courthouse, walking past reporters and TV cameras and ducking into a waiting black Mercedes sedan.
In the courtroom where the trial occurred, Combs, 55, seemed elated and aware his friend had visited as family members including his mother watched the proceedings. He has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges alleging that he used his fame, fortune and violence to commit crimes over a 20-year period.
Ye’s appearance at the courthouse came a day after a woman identified in court only by the pseudonym “Jane” finished six days of testimony.
She testified that during a relationship with Combs that stretched from 2021 until his arrest last September at a Manhattan hotel, she felt coerced into frequent dayslong sexual marathons with male sex workers while Combs watched and sometimes filmed the drug-fueled encounters.
Defense attorneys have argued that Combs committed no crimes and that federal prosecutors were trying to police consensual sex that occurred between adults.
On Thursday, Jane testified that during a three-month break in her relationship with Combs, she flew to Las Vegas in January 2023 with a famous rapper who was close friends with Combs.
Prior to Jane’s testimony on the subject, lawyers and the judge conducted a lengthy hearing out of public view to discuss what could be divulged about the January trip.
Jane was asked if the rapper she accompanied along with the rapper’s girlfriend was “an individual at the top of the music industry as well … an icon in the music industry.”
“Yes,” Jane replied.
Once in Las Vegas, Jane testified, she went with a group including the rapper to dinner, a strip club and a hotel room party, where a sex worker had sex with a woman while a half-dozen others watched.
She said there was dancing and the rapper said, “hey beautiful,” and told her, in crude language, that he had always wanted to have sex with her. Jane said she didn’t recall exactly when, but she flashed her breasts while dancing.
Also Friday, the judge said he was leaning toward removing a juror and replacing him with an alternate after prosecutors found inconsistencies in his answers about where he lives.
During jury selection, the juror said he lived in the Bronx. But, prosecutors said, he told a court employee that he recently moved to New Jersey.
Under questioning by Judge Arun Subramanian, the juror acknowledged moving, but said he retains a New York driver’s license and stays there during the week. Only New York residents can serve as Manhattan federal court jurors.
Combs’ lawyers called it a “thinly veiled effort to dismiss a Black juror” and suggested Subramanian was “conflating inconsistencies with lying.”
The judge noted that even if the juror is ousted, the jury would be diverse.
